


i have lived a life

by GlassRose



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: I'm mostly trying to get across how fucking weird peggy's life would be if she just accepted it, M/M, absolutely atrocious, and mostly I do not like to write fic that acknowledges it, endgame was bad y'all, i guess you could call this a fix-it, just shockingly bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:01:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21612706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassRose/pseuds/GlassRose
Summary: She keeps thinking she sees a man she thought was dead out of the corner of her eye. One night as she's getting home, she hears a vaguely familiar voice in her house shouting, "This is wrong! You can't do this to me; you can't do this to her!" She bursts in, but only her husband is there, smiling innocently and putting on her favorite record. Is it her favorite record? Has it always been? She can't shake the feeling that something's not quite right."Shall we go to the L&L Automat for dinner, darling?" she suggests one night. A brief look of concern flits across his face, but it clears. "I like the one down the street better," he counters. They go. She passes a woman wearing a green waitress's dress on the way, and just for a moment, they make eye contact. She doesn't know this woman, but...something...is...wrong.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 7
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

She keeps thinking she sees a man she thought was dead out of the corner of her eye. One night as she's getting home, she hears a vaguely familiar voice in her house shouting, "This is wrong! You can't do this to me; you can't do this to her!" She bursts in, but only her husband is there, smiling innocently and putting on her favorite record. Is it her favorite record? Has it always been? She can't shake the feeling that something's not quite right.

"Shall we go to the L&L Automat for dinner, darling?" she suggests one night. A brief look of concern flits across his face, but it clears. "I like the one down the street better," he counters. They go. She passes a woman wearing a green waitress's dress on the way, and just for a moment, they make eye contact. She doesn't know this woman, but...something...is...wrong.

He puts his hand on her back and ushers her away, down to the automat he had suggested, and not the one she had. The food is so-so.

At work she makes a friend. He has dark eyes, dark hair, a wooden leg. He treats her like the expert she is, but she feels placed on a pedestal. He's trying. She wishes she could tell someone, anyone about the man living in her house and sleeping in her bed. But not yet. Not yet.

She asks why. "You left me and you didn't have to," she says. "I thought you were giving me the answer to the question I was afraid to ask."

He frowns. "I didn't have a choice."

But he did. If he'd wanted to live, he would have found a way. "I thought you were telling me you loved him more than you loved me."

His face tightens. He doesn't know what to say.

"And I thought perhaps it was only right. You'd known each other so long. You did everything for him."

"Please don't do this," he says, a coldness in his eyes that never used to be there. A chill sweeps over her body. Who is this man sleeping in her bed?

She's walking home from work when next it happens. She spots him. The other man who should be dead. He's different, but his eyes are the same. He ducks into an alley and she follows him. "You're dead," she says when he turns around.

"Not quite," he says, his tone bitter. "It's not supposed to be like this. He shouldn't be here."

The relief she feels is heavily tempered by guilt for feeling it. "I care for him. Deeply. I do. And yet…"

"You know it's not right. Send him home. You're the only one who can fix this. Reject him. I'm sorry, but you have to."

"And send him into your arms?" she accuses, feeling bad as she says it. She's been on edge so long she finds herself saying unkind words she doesn't mean.

"Maybe," he admits. Strange to hear him confess so easily. Doesn't he know the kind of trouble he could get in? "Maybe not." He sighs and runs his gloved hand through long hair. "You're happy. You live a good life with good people around you. You leave a strong legacy. You're well loved. He misses all of it. That's how it's meant to be. I've tried to stop him from stealing all that from you. I can't do anymore. He won't listen. The only way to save your future, everybody's future, is to tell him you don't love him and you don't want him. Tell him to go home."

She looks at him, the man she used to know, his body broader, his eyes older, his hair longer, and asks, to avoid making a choice, "What happened to you?"

"I survived," he says. He doesn't say more. "You deserve the life you chose."

She doesn't promise him anything. She goes home.

Her husband puts on her favorite record and invites her to dance.

She sees the waitress again the next evening.

She goes home again.

He's reading the newspaper.

She doesn't know how he's here. She doesn't know how either of them got here, looking the same age physically but decades older in their eyes. "Go home," she says, because she will never be able to put it behind her, this notion that she's living the wrong life.

He looks up. "I am home."

"No," she says, and the discomfort she's been trying to ignore since he came back to her will not be pushed down anymore. "You're not. You don't even exist. Our marriage isn't binding. You're playacting. Go home."

"I love you," he says, shocked.

"No you don't," she accuses, her anxiety coming out in cruel words. "You don't, and it doesn't matter if you do. I don't love you." She's not certain it's a lie anymore.

He stands.

"I want to live my life," she says. "If you take that from me, then you cannot claim to love me. You need to go home."

He reaches for her. She steps back. He's hurt. Good. That will work. "Please," he tries.

"Get _out_." She raises her voice. "However you got here, go home the same way. Let me let you go! Let me live my life. Don't make this harder than it has to be."

He doesn't cry. He goes upstairs and he doesn't come back down. When she goes up to check, he's gone, along with the bag she was never allowed to touch. She lets herself cry, and she lets herself feel relief.

She goes to the L&L Automat for dinner. The waitress is there and remarks on her accent. Her emotions are all a muddle, but she smiles anyway, and things begin to feel right again.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve came home two weeks late. He came home and no one was waiting for him. He managed to track down his people at a nearby motel and knocked on Bucky's door. If Bucky even looked at him, it'd be more than he deserved. No one wanted him. He'd ruined everything.

Bucky opened the door. Steve braced himself, but Bucky just said, "You came home," and hugged him.

Steve sank into his embrace, shaking. "I don't know what's wrong with me," he confessed, because every bit of him hurt too much. "I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Here in Bucky's arms, the last few months seemed like something someone else had done, someone taking over his body and trying to live a life he hadn't even thought he wanted. "She threw me out."

"She had to."

"I know," Steve moaned. "I know. You were right. I feel like I've gone insane or, or been possessed. I don't want that."

"I think," Bucky said carefully, "that you created a safe fantasy of Peggy when the Snap happened because she had already died and Thanos couldn't get to her, and because the trauma of the cataclysm was so horrific, you fixated on it too much. And then time travel offered you a way to make it real, even though it mostly wasn't."

Steve closed his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Steve. You're home now. We're going to get through it." Bucky tugged him inside the room and shut the door.

"Why don't you hate me?" Steve asked miserably.

"Oh, Steve," Bucky sighed. "I could never hate you." They sat down on the bed and looked at each other. "Just...just stay with me this time. Please. I'm ready whenever you are."

Steve nodded helplessly. "I promise." With a trembling hand, he reached up to brush a stray hair out of Bucky's face. And left his hand there. He didn't feel like he deserved any of this from Bucky, but he needed it. He moved closer and pressed his forehead to Bucky's, just sharing that moment, that feeling, for as long as possible. Bucky leaned into the touch.

Steve was home again.


End file.
